The Delaware Township Municipal Building is in Sergeantsville, once called Skunktown.

1888

SKUNKTOWN — We have often been asked how the thriving town of Sergeantsville acquired the nickname of “Skunktown.” We ran across Dr. Cramer and what he doesn’t know about Sergeantsville and Delaware Township isn’t worth knowing.

He said that in the early part of the century the hotel proprietor in that town secured a new sign post. A hole was dug one afternoon large enough to bury a house and barn in and then workmen retired for the night.

Next morning when the neighborhood had gathered to assist in planting the post it was discovered that three or four skunks had taken possession of the hole. From that day Sergeantsville has been dubbed “Skunktown.”

WOMEN’S WORK — Shirt manufacturing in Lambertville has become an important industry. About 50 women are employed at their own homes making shirts for Philadelphia parties who send goods already cut for work. Some make $1 a day.

1913

PROGRESS — The LVRR Company has finished the 6,000-barrel concrete cistern on the hill by the old flax mill in Rowland’s Mills, and has a large upright boiler and triple expansion engine in the station to force the water through the long pipes.

LEATHER GOODS — Ground has been broken for the erection of a harness and shoemaker’s shop in close proximity to the remodeled barbershop in Pittstown. Such building and repairing improve the looks of our little town.

1938

WHEW — Flemington’s relief load is at a new high with $467.94 expensed last month, surpassing all previous figures.

1963

TARGETED — If you are tired to death of getting mail from charitable organizations, publishers, mail order houses, and so on, would it comfort you to know that your name is worth money?

Business firms are willing to pay from one cent up to one dollar apiece for names of Hunterdon County residents for their mailing lists.

The price depends on the selectivity of the particular list and on the comparative value of those on it as prospective buyers of goods and services.

If an investment company wants to pinpoint its approach to Hunterdon County families with incomes of over $10,000, it would get 2,312 names. If a fundraising company wants only college graduates in Hunterdon County, the list would total 2,347 names. For men who are in the pre-retirement ages of 60 to 64, the total would be 1,225.

Several hundred firms are in the listing business in the United States. They cull the names and addresses that are their stock in trade from newspapers, from public records and from many other sources.

DUPED — Plans to boycott a talk scheduled for tomorrow night by a leader of the Russian Orthodox Church at the Flemington Baptist Church were revealed to The Democrat late yesterday.

Two representatives of the American Council of Christian Churches, of Collingwood, said that they would parade thru the Flemington streets tomorrow afternoon with placards denouncing as Communistic the appearance of Archbishop John Woodland, the representative of the Russian Church in North and South America.

The two ministers called on The Democrat because they said, “the public is being duped” by such visitors from Russia.

“Russia is using the church, education, all different means to spread their gospel of Communism,” said Rev. James Shaw, executive secretary for International Christian Relief.

The other protesting minister is Rev. Lynn Gray Gordon, general secretary of the International Board for the Presbyterian Home Missions, also of Collingwood. He is a Bible Presbyterian and Rev. Shaw is a Regular Baptist. They added that they could be best, and willingly, described as “fundamentalists.”

1988

LOOKING GOOD — The “outlook is good” for Hunterdon County’s economy in 1988, following “an upward course in 1987” that was somewhat slower than the previous year, according to state Department of Labor analysts.

There is a golf course with clubhouse at Beaver Brook in Clinton Township. Hunterdon County Democrat

Prospects for growth in Hunterdon are “particularly good along the Route 78 corridor,” they said in their annual economic review and forecast edition of “Employment and the Economy,” noting that construction appears imminent for 800,000 square feet of office space in Readington Township and for the hotel/conference center at Beaver Brook in Clinton Township.

Residential construction is expected to be at a lower level than it was last year, department officials say, but that could still mean a total of about 1,000 units county-wide.

In the public sector, “the state Department of Transportation has scheduled a $13 million upgrading of two sections of Route 78 east of Bloomsbury and is starting the dualization of the 1.5-mile section of Route 31 between Allerton and Payne roads in Clinton Township.

WORTH MORE — Assessments in Hunterdon County are up 22 percent this year, to a new high of nearly $5.9 billion.

The increase, much of which is attributable to revaluations in five municipalities, will translate into approximately $7 billion in “equalized” valuation, the base on which county taxes are apportioned.

While that figure is not exact yet, it holds the prospect for a 1988 county tax levy that could go up about $8 million without raising the county tax rate, which last year was just over 45 cents per $100 of equalized value.

That big an increase can happen only if taxes to support the new budget fall within the mandated 4.5 percent state cap. However, the growth in Hunterdon helps out in that department as well.

EFFECTIVE — Recognition of Martin Luther King Day will be incorporated into the Hunterdon Central High School curriculum next year in a response to a walkout on his birthday this year by about 60 students.